Friday, 22 January 2021

ERNEST FRANK’S PEPPERSTOCK PERIODICALS PART 2, THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT, NOT

 

If the world was a body, then Pepperstock is where you would put the enema.

Have I got your attention?

As you may have detected I’m not happy it’s my birthday and there isn’t a damn thing to do in this God-awful place.

There is no entertainment here or any sport or leisure facilities at all if we want to do anything even remotely interesting then it’s a five-mile journey normally by taxi to Nettlebridge.

They have a bowling alley, snooker hall, 18-hole golf course, swimming pool and a cinema as well as an assortment of restaurants.

But even the facilities of Nettlebridge pale into insignificance if you go ten miles further afield to Eastchapel.

In Eastchapel they have a huge leisure centre as well as an ice rink with their own ice hockey team, at least five golf courses, an Olympic size swimming pool and a leisure lagoon.

Then they have a multiplex cinema and theatre complex and more restaurants that you can shake a stick at.

Pepperstock has two cafes and a chip shop where you can eat in, we did once have a kebab house, but the locals thought it to exotic and it closed after a few months.

I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that we don’t have any facilities at all for example Pepperstock has a six-hole golf course it used to have nine holes before the last three collapsed into the abandoned mine workings running beneath it.

The “Penny pool” and the name should give you some idea of its age, closed in 1944 after a Halifax bomber returning from a raid on Germany crashed through its roof.

It is still used for recreational purposes by the youngsters of the town being a particularly good spot for catching newts.

The closest thing to a snooker hall in the town is the saloon bar at the Station Hotel which was fully equipped with a pool table minus two stripped balls the triangle and a cue.   

We don’t even have a football team anymore in the glory days we used to be in the football league.

But were not even in the obscure minor leagues that no one has heard of.

Pepperstock Town went bankrupt long before it was fashionable to do so.

When Accrington Stanley were still a force to be reckoned with and Bradford Park Avenue still graced the fourth division.

The Woolpack Lane stadium is still standing, just about although every year when the winter storms come and go bits of the stadium normally go with them.

The last film to be screened at the Tivoli theatre in Sheepfold Street was Zulu in 1965. When one night just as the British formed up on the redoubt and the first volley of shots rang out Horny Harry Brent was playing hide the hot dog with Doreen the chain-smoking usherette in his office.

He had Doreen bent over his desk so she could still read her magazine and while he was attending to her from behind, he obviously hit the spot because he made her drop her fag which landed in his wastepaper basket.

Luckily the Fire brigade were only a mile down the road attending a fire at the carpet warehouse and although the Firemen were quick on the scene and put out the ensuing blaze quite quickly the “Tiv” never reopened.

Obviously, the video age has much improved and enriched our lives its only a shame the area is so prone to power cuts.

I think the only thing’s preserving the sanity of Pepperstock’s twenty first century residents would be computer game console’s and sexual deviation the latter clearly a throwback to the town’s sheep rearing heritage.

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